[NCSG-EC] Follow up from Montreal discussion on our CRM

Sun Nov 24 05:41:57 EET 2019

Hi all,

For those interested, I'll be talking to Josh from 1400 to 1500 EST on
Monday.

I'll give the call details to anyone interested in a separate email.

Have a nice evening,

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:11 AM Raphael Beauregard-Lacroix <
rbeauregardlacroix at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> As a follow up on our discussion on CIVI and Wapix during the EC meeting:
>
> I have done a bit of asking around and research regarding web development
> costs generally and it seems that Wapix prices are still in what can be
> considered "market"
>
> Now there are some costs which are not clear and some numbers that did not
> match, as we discussed. I still have to clarify that with Josh. But:
>
> . 95$/hr for web development for a US/Canada based company is rather
> standard; someone who begins would charge less, with the downside of added
> risk.
>
> . while 300 to 500$/month for "support and maintenance" is more on the
> high side, it remains that CIVI hosting is not just like any other type of
> backend. It requires someone who knows what theyre doing (i.e. who knows
> how to handle that CRM). Still, I find their 99$ price point on hosting a
> bit high. I'll see what can be done with that.
>
> . I could find some public price points for CIVI monthly packages, in the
> low 100's, but they did not include any dev time nor technical support, nor
> backups, not virtual server for testing, nor ddos protection, etc. etc.
>
> . Finally, we are looking at at least a few if not several thousands of
> dollars in "discovery" fees for onboarding a new company or individual. We
> were to pick an individual consultant, it might be more of a few rather
> than several, but think about it this way: onboarding is at least 20 hours
> of work, and most likely more than that, so minimally 2000$ - more likely
> towards or above 3k.
>
> . And maybe most importantly, subject to verification as Steph required,
> we have a 9000$/year allocation by ICANN. If we don't use that money on
> these services, it's just not spent, we don't get to bank it or use it on
> travel support... Given that we have a good relationship with Wapix
> already, I feel it would be a better investment of these monies to continue
> with them.
>
>
> That being said, our current system is I would say barely usable, and I
> heard all of you express dissatisfaction with it. I also share this feeling.
>
> Now the thing is, even if Wapix ended up being slightly above market
> price, I would not be in favour of spending my time working on switching
> right away, for the following reasons:
>
> I understand that a lot of things Wapix does are things we can do "on our
> own," but I don't think that seeing things this way is sustainable. We
> cannot rely on the fact that we would always have someone ready *and* able
> to take care of these things (and as a matter of fact, we have no one
> now).
>
> In that sense, the only longer-term sustainable solution is to have
> someone do it for us. Let's say we pick an individual consultant who begins
> and will do it for cheap. Great, we just saved a few 1000's over a year.
> Then, one year later, said person, because theyre skilled, finds a higher
> paying job in a company. Now we've lost our consultant, must look again,
> pay discovery fees again, etc. Do note that we faced a similar situation
> with Wapix, were our main POC left the company and left us in a limbo for
> several weeks. However we were spared new discovery fees once we got
> someone assign to us.
>
> In addition, if we only pay the monthly fee and don't buy any development
> time now, we are paying for a system we are not satisfied with, while we
> have the opportunity to spend to try and make it better.
>
> So subject to discussion with Josh for the points that need clarification,
> I would suggest that we go with the cheaper option which includes less
> monthly tickets and less development time included, but that we also buy
> more time. How much, I don't know; at least one 10 hour block.
>
> Given that Maryam is the prime user of the system right now, I would take
> it upon myself to work with her to make sure that every dev hour is spent
> on something that makes her life more easy (and incidentally, ours). We
> used the previous dev time to fix the really outstanding issues, get
> ourselves a minimally workable front end, and to cover up for emergency
> issues that arose with the elections. Now I think we can try to capitalize
> on that and make some further progress.
>
> And as an additional note, Wapix SLA is rather open; we need one month's
> notice to terminate. So if any of you is willing to put the time and effort
> required to come up with a workable and financially advantageous
> switch-over plan, eventually asking for an ABR when the time comes and if
> we need it, or cutting some deal with NPOC and NCUC for more money as we've
> done in the past, it will always be time to use up our dev time and do the
> switch. You are free and welcome to start working on that right away, I
> have absolutely no problem with that, on the contrary. But for now, I would
> rather use the time I can dedicate to that task and the money we have
> available, in order to improve the systems we have rather than coming up
> with another plan.
>
> And to end, some numbers: 400/month*12 is 4800. That leaves us up to 30
> hours of dev time we could buy before topping our allocation. Do note that
> I'm not in favor of topping it, I'm just giving these out so we know what
> ballpark we're playing in.
>
> The final decision belongs to the EC collectively so I'm looking to hear
> from you all on that. I will schedule a call with Josh early next week to
> discuss our questions (those we discussed in Montreal) and anything else,
> and will share the details on list so you can all join.
>
> CCed techteam list for information purposes.
>
> Have a nice day,
>
>
>
>
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